Your sweetness is killing me.
I’m rotting from the inside,
Things are coming loose inside me.

Your beauty is terrifying.
Your enticing allure
Makes me shutter with premature grief.

Premeditated withdrawal
Peaks over the horizon that I am trying to escape.
I want the darkness of lustful ignorance
To surround me for as long as possible.

I want to live in these small moments with you.
Wrapped in each other’s touch,
Under the haze of youth,
We live in these moments,
Unattached to the world,
Absent of sobering context.

Then, we are apart
And the cold bite of my detachment shocks me.
That obscure reflection I see
Taunts me.
I cannot have you.

So I contemplate our undoing,
My famed disappearing act.
But mirages of your face
Keep me bound to you,
To those moments
That I wish would encompass my life.

I should have stayed lost
Out on those backroads,
Watching the lightning
Make the night clouds glow.
Because now I can’t stop thinking about your lips
And picturing us tangled together.
And now that I want you
I’m afraid there’s no going back.

I want to show you
How I open up.
I want to feel you open up for me.
You’ve invaded my mind
And the thought of you catches my breath.
The air escapes me.
My heart could jump out of my chest
Remembering the way you kissed me gently.

Part of me wants to fall for you,
But most of me knows that I can’t.
Most of me knows that you’re out of reach
And broken people like me
Should stay far away
From purity like you.
Because I will only ruin you.

But I am quenched by your kiss,
Sated by your touch,
And still so hungry for more.
I’m starving for words of affection
That I know I should not want.
I’m withering away without your validation.

I’ve been spending too much time
Staring at your sweet face,
Your strong body.
I’ve been spending too much time
Watching your smile
Make gentle lines on your cheeks,
Kissing them.  

While we stare
And laugh
I find it hard
To keep my heart from overflowing.
I find it hard to keep those words
Away from your ears.
The ones I told myself
I would not utter
Until I knew myself better.

I should have stayed lost,
Wandering alone,
Between two kinds of love.
Old and new.
Him and you.
I should have wandered into the rainy night,
Letting high grass caress my hips,
Sinking below their tops
Until I cannot be found.

I’d rather lay there
Until the brush consumed me,
Turning me into dirt,
Than fall into you
And out again.
I’d rather disappear into foliage
Than hurt myself
By loving you.
I’d rather been devoured
By those Pennsylvania amber waves
Than be in love with you.

Blue light slinks in under the blinds
And veils your face.
The shadow of your eyes,
Your jaw
Is bold against your glowing skin.
I try to float up to your lips
But I am clumsy and heavy.
And you are soft and strong,
Sweet and inviting.

My breathing is shallow
And my pulse deep,
Radiating in my chest,
Fluttering in stomach.
I could cry,
But I won’t.
I’m so easily overwhelmed by poetry,
I’m easily overwhelmed by melody,
By art.
You are their sum
And I am saturated by you.

The feeling is cold,
But my cheeks are warm.
Don’t scream,
I tell myself.
Don’t break down here.
Don’t let burdensome words
Escape your historically tight lips
That have now found themselves foolish.
Foolish girl.
I am weaker than I thought,
I am weaker than I need to be
To keep up this game.

But you make me gush.
My skin is flush.
I’m blushing pink,
Inventing scenes of your body against mine.
I’m dripping over you.
My legs wither and I fall into contra pasto
Memorializing the taste of you.

My writing is unwieldy
And you deserve better.
Your smile deserves grace
And organized meter.
Your hands deserve alliteration and metaphor.
Your arms deserve allusion.
Your eyes a rhyme scheme,
Your hair personification.

Socially stupid
My pure intentions are useless
I’m a good friend frozen still
Struck silent by a fear of being a nuisance

I understand if you don’t want me around
I don’t know what to say
Or when to say it
I don’t know how to act
Or when to laugh

I just know that we could help each other
I wanna grow with you
I get emotional thinking of all the beautiful things we could do
But I’m a ******* loser
And you’re just to cool

I don’t want to seem too desperate
To eager to get close to you
I just miss how we used to laugh
I miss how we used to scream at the night
Singing and spinning until we were half asleep

Socially stupid
Cordially illiterate
Friendship-less

Whatever it was
That once drew words from
A tempest of a mind
Is missing now.

Whatever it was
That animated my withering hands
With dancerly motion
Has taken flight.

What did I have
That sifted through chaos
And spoke with power
Through my juvenile lips.
Power with which my grown voice
Could not conjure except
In a moment’s horror.

Skill generated from the lust of a fire
Stoked by unpredictability,
Fed by creative superiority complex.

I can look back at my adolescence with shame
And disgust.
I can tell myself
How much wiser I am now.
But that lustful child,
That frail beast
Could soak a page in pain
In ways I struggle to mimic.

I was erupting with language,
Bursting at the seams with monologue,
Overcome by soliloquy.
Now I am a mute stage hand
Calling for my line.

Must I once again take the spotlight
For an audience of self judgment
To prove to myself
That I am capable of putting on
A written performance worth reading?

Let this be my audition.
I will move myself to a standing ovation.

I know it's wrong
To carry on like this.
But now that I have seen you again,
In ways that were too intricate
For me to unwind as a child,
And the love that i've come to know mundanely well
Is few and far,
I can't seem to keep you at arms length.
Because my arms are selfish
And my self-denial is anything but denial.

Maybe it's just a symptom of this pandemic.
My isolation has always
Brought me back to you.
And it could be wrong.
I could be leading you to the pyre,
Following blindly with a torch in hand.

Are you willing to be a martyr
For my narcissism?
A sacrifice to my selfish indulgence
Of another's attention?
But I know your blindness,
Your readiness to burn with a smile
As long as I lit the fire.

You're worth more than my oscillating indecisiveness.
You're a steady pillar
Holding up my contingency plans.
When will you crumble
And let me face the world
With true uncertainty?

As long as I have you,
I will always have something to be certain of.

That blue ridge has vanished.
Not even a sketch of it can be discerned
Out of the white mask it wears.

Behind that mask
Beyond the ridge
I turned into a woman.
I replaced my identity
And decided that I was not a vessel of pain
Or a naive child.

I decided to be intelligence
Kindness
Bravery
And ambition.

Splash.
The lure breaks the water.
He jigs and reels.
Nothing.

What I wouldn't give
To have seen that bridge burn
To feel the radiating heat
Just barely scorching my skin
To know how far away the glow could be seen.

I wonder if my own burning radiates.
I wonder if my still glowing embers
Can be heard crackling.
Or if, like the bridge,
All the incendiary evidence of my youth
Crumbled into the water
And washed into the not so distant sea.

The mask is clearing
And subtle blue emerges.
Will I wait to see it bare its face?
I don't think so.